Abstract

GUZMAN-CABRERA, Andrea Carolina  and  FLOREZ-HERRERA, Jesús Fernando. Effectiveness of the Retributive Rate (TR) as an Economic Instrument for the Protection of Water Resources in Colombia. Ens. Econ. [online]. 2019, vol.29, n.55, pp.129-151.  Epub Mar 14, 2020. ISSN 0121-117X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/ede.v29n55.79561.

One of the main negative externalities on the environment is water pollution generated by the discharge of waste carried out by different economic activities. To deal with this externality, economic literature discusses instruments such as norms, charges and tradable permit systems, derived from theoretical developments such as Pigouvian taxes and the Coase theorem, which introduce into the cost function of economic agents the damage they generate with pollution. Colombia, through Law 99 of 1993, established an economic instrument to correct this problem, the Retribution Rate -TR. The objective of this study is to show the functioning of this economic instrument in Colombia, determine its impact and analyze the implementation problems it presents. To achieve this, a series of data panel models are developed that associate the pollution charges collected in Colombia to their respective TR, finding that the TR does not explain the behavior of these pollution charges and concluding that the economic instrument does not completely achieve its objective of reducing the pollution that reaches the bodies of water in Colombia.

JEL: D62; Q25; Q53; Q28.

Keywords : externalities; water resource; dumping; economic instrument.

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